In maths two numbers are said to be in the golden ratio if the ratio of the two numbers is equal to the ratio of the sum of the numbers to the larger number.
The symbol for the golden ratio is the Greek letter phi.
There have been 17 U.S. Presidents, 38 U.S. Supreme Court Justices, and 136 Nobel Laureates who have been inducted members of Phi Beta Kappa.
Noblemen who’ve won the Nobel Prize include Robert Cecil, 1st Viscount Cecil of Chelwood (for architecting the League of Nations), J. W. Strutt, Lord Rayleigh (for discovering argon) and Bertrand, 3rd Earl Russell. Russell received the Literature Prize for his writings “championing humanitarian ideals and freedom of thought,” although his most famous work was Principia Mathematica.
Plastic Bertrand (Roger Allen François Jouret) is a Belgian musician, songwriter, producer, editor and television presenter, best known for the 1978 international hit single “Ça plane pour moi”, thie title of which means “everything’s going well for me” (literally: “it is gliding for me”). It is one of only 3 French-language songs to reach the US Billboard Hot 100, along with “Dominique” by the Belgian singer The Singing Nun and “Je t’aime… moi non plus” by French singers Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin.
Ray Leigh is a stuntman with one movie credit, The Dooms Chapel Horror.
Bob Clampett was one of the major cartoon directors at Warner Brothers in the 30s and 40s (along with Chuck Jones, Fritz Freling, and Robert McKimson) and when TV came along, he went into children’s programming. Cecil the Seasick Sea Serpent was a short puppet featuring Cecil, his human boy friend Beany, and their arch enemy Dishonest John. The show later became a cartoon, with Clampett being one of the few cartoon directors to be named checked in the theme song (“created by Bob Clampett”).
YKK has gone from hand-made zippers to one of the major corporations in Japan. They are still the world’s largest zipper manufacturer, and the letters YKK appear on zippers produced by the company in 70 countries. The initials YKK stand for Yoshida Kōgyō Kabushiki Kaisha, meaning “Yoshida Manufacturing Shareholding Company”.
The University of Akron Zips, the only US school to use that team name, took it from Zipper, a name for a rubber boot with that type of closure that was produced by local company Goodyear. Its mascot, Zippy the Kangaroo, is one of the few female mascots in US college sports.
Elias Howe, Jr. recevied a patent for a zipper in 1851:
[QUOTE=U.S. Patent Office, Letters Patent No. 8,540, “Improvement in Fastening for Garments”]
What I claim as my invention, and desire to have secured to me by Letters Patent, is-
l. The opening, closing, and fastening together the two sides of a garment or other article by means of the clasps and ribs operating in combination, substantially in the manner hereinabove described.
2. The method of connecting the clasps one to the other in pairs and in the series of pairs by the links, cord, and beads, substantially in the manner hereinabove set forth.
[/QUOTE]
Howe, already famous and wealthy for his sewing machine, didn’t pursue his invention; zippers weren’t commercially successful for another half-century.
Howe Military Academy is a private, co-educational, and college preparatory boarding school in Howe, Indiana.
Lord Howe Island is part of NSW and lies about 600 km east of Port Macquarie. It was named for Richard Howe, the 1st Earl Howe, who was the First Lord of the Admiralty at the time of its discovery.
South Africa based SacOil plans to build a 600 km pipeline through Mozambique, to access offshore oil reserves in the Mozambique channel.
The Banzai Pipeline s a surf reef break located in Hawaii, off Sunset Beach Park in Pupukea on O’ahu’s North Shore, often considered the world’s deadliest wave to surfers. The name was first used in Bruce Brown’s movie Surfing Hollow Days.
Sunset in Sydney occurs at 7.43pm today (Saturday 22 November).
In the classic film Sunset Boulevard, the iconic house used for filming was actually on Wilshire Boulevard.
Most of the Julia Roberts / Richard Gere film Pretty Woman, a remake of the classic Cinderella story, was set at the Regent Beverly Wilshire Hotel. The singer Elvis Presley and later the actor Warren Beatty lived several years in the hotel. It was also the home of John Lennon, when he had separated for several months from his wife Yoko Ono. Famous guests have included, among many others, President Barack Obama, the Emperor of Japan Hirohito, the Dalai Lama and Sadruddin Aga Khan, as well as the actors Michael Caine, Michael Douglas, Farrah Fawcett, Dustin Hoffman, Anjelica Huston, Elton John, Robert Pattinson, Walter Matthau, Banu Alkan, and Al Pacino.
The Sydney suburb of Marrickville includes an area known as The Warren, named for the large number of rabbits formerly found there.
The New Orleans suburb of Arabi was named after an infamous terrorist. Arabi Pasha has just torched Alexandria, in an Egyptian revolt against British rule, and the people of the Louisiana town had their own discontent with New Orleans and burned the courthouse, and felt Arabi Pasha was a kindred spirit. Arfabi’s main industry was slaughterhouses, which were illegal in New Orleans, so Arabi seceded from the city into adjacent St. Bernard Parish.
Saint Bernard of Clairvaux (feast day 20 August) was made a Doctor of the Church in 1830. Among other things, he is the patron saint of apiarists.
There have been five NFL teams that have lost the Super Bowl in their one and only appearance: the San Diego Chargers (XXIX), the Atlanta Falcons (XXXIII), the Tennessee Titans (XXXIV), the Carolina Panthers (XXXVIII), and the Arizona Cardinals (XLII). The Falcons and Titans lost in consecutive Super Bowls.
Only three teams won in their one and only appearance: the New York Jets (III), the Tampa Bay Buccaneers (XXXVII), and the New Orleans Saints (XLIV).
The Detroit Lions, Cleveland Browns, Jacksonville Jaguars, and Houston Texans have never appeared in a Super Bowl.
ETA: ninja’d by Cunctator, so his is in play: